He nearly brought the cogs of Congress to a halt in 2013 over the Affordable Care Act, and now the Texas senator and GOP presidential hopeful is in the market for health insurance for his wife, Heidi, while he’s on the campaign trail. This is a bit awkward.

As of Thursday, two nurses—Amber Joy Vinson, 29, and Nina Pham, 26—who treated the first Ebola patient in the U.S., Thomas Eric Duncan, at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, had tested positive for the virus, and the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was catching heat on Capitol Hill.

The biggest union of registered nurses in the country says it has spoken with workers at the hospital in Dallas where a man died of Ebola and two nurses have been infected, and it reports a level of carelessness that boggles the mind.

Just days after it was confirmed that a 26-year-old nurse at a Dallas hospital had been infected with Ebola after caring for patient Thomas Eric Duncan, another health care worker at the same hospital has tested positive.

While Spain attends to the first case of Ebola transmission outside of Africa since the crisis began, Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, expresses cautious optimism.

When I first witnessed a blood-red Alabama sunset, I thought of the Gudger and Ricketts families, their backs bent under the heavy bags of cotton, looking at this biblical ending to their long day of toil. The urge to re-read Agee was overwhelming.

As of Friday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry became the first occupant of his office to be indicted in nearly a century, and as of Tuesday, the Lone Star State’s top executive was ready to turn himself in to the local authorities as he stands accused of abusing his power.

The Texas governor’s presidential aspirations may take a back seat to his legal troubles. Rick Perry stands formally accused of two felonies related to his attempt to force the state capital’s district attorney, a Democrat, to resign.